Columbus denies payment for damage to two flooded homes

Columbus won't pay homeowners whose houses were damaged in January when a waterline erupted and flooded their Northwest Side neighborhood.

The city sent letters last week denying the claims for damage at two homes near the end of the horseshoe-shaped development. In a third claim, one of those homeowners also sought payment for damage to contents in the house.

The letters say that the city has done “a thorough investigation of the waterline break in your neighborhood and can find no evidence that any action on the part of the city of Columbus caused this break to occur.”

Residents said they expected repairs to cost tens of thousands of dollars, but the three claims the city received totaled $2,500.

“We found no obvious cause for the pipe failure that we could have anticipated,” said John Ivanic, assistant director of the Department of Public Utilities, in an email.

As a political subdivision, the city has some immunity against claims under state law. The city’s letters to the homeowners said it wasn’t negligent because its crews “responded promptly once notified of the problem, and started repairs in a timely manner.”

The problem started just after 7 a.m. Jan. 16. A 20-inch waterline that branches off a 24-inch main line running north and south along the west side of Olentangy River Road burst in the woods north of OhioHealth Riverside Methodist Hospital.

About 12 million gallons of water gushed from the burst line before crews were able to install a valve west of the break to redirect water. The cast-iron waterline was first laid in 1952.

Water rushed through the neighborhood to a single drain near a retaining wall separating Route 315 from the houses, but the drain was overwhelmed. Water eventually poured into basements, garages and first floors of a dozen houses in the neighborhood.

Houses near the drain filled with water. One had as much as 8 feet of water fill its basement before seeping through the floorboards on the first floor.

Ivanic said the department used its computer monitoring program to check water-pressure flow the morning of the break, but those readings were normal. The city received no notifications of problems in the area that would have alerted it to the break.

The city rarely pays for water or sewer damage claims, and when it does, the settlements are typically for much less than the claim.

The Department of Public Utilities has paid 10 of the 156 claims against its water and sewer and drainage divisions since 2012. Those payments totaled $43,000 of the $876,500 in claims filed during that period.

The city attorney’s office reviewed 16 water and sewer claims totaling about $107,000 during that period. It paid seven of those claims for about $38,000.

rrouan@dispatch.com

@RickRouan

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